Will a Budget Battle Help Jerry Brown and the Democrats and Hurt Schwarzenegger and GOP?

If you are reading this, you are a campaign consultant, aspire to be a campaign consultant, some of your best friends are campaign consultants, or you enjoy second guessing campaign consultants.
So, let’s try a little exercise.
First, let’s assume you are a Democratic consultant.
Second, let’s assume that Jerry Brown, Darrell Steinberg, John Perez and John Burton ask you to join them on a conference call to discuss Democratic strategy for the 2010 campaigns. They want your advice on how the gubernatorial campaign and the party should handle the following numbers from a December PPIC poll:
•        82 percent of likely California voters think the state is generally going in the wrong direction.
•        When asked whether they think that during the next twelve months we will have good times financially or bad times, 73 percent choose bad times.
•        When asked to volunteer the most important issues facing the state, 61 percent say jobs and the economy and 13 percent point to the state budget.
You have enough time to do a little online research before the call.
Meg Whitman’s website calls for reform to make government serve the people. She says we need to change the mindset of the entrenched bureaucracy and run California ’s government (surprise, surprise) more like a business. Her plan is to try to achieve $15 billion in savings and efficiencies within four years, implement a government spending freeze, and reduce the size of government.
You are thinking this is incredibly bold, compelling stuff but decide to see what Steve Poizner is offering. A quick look at his website confirms that he is taking the budget issue in earnest. He is offering a 20 page plan to close the current 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 $20 billion plus shortfall through a combination of economic growth in the state and hiring, debt and spending freezes in state government.
Now, if you have run very many campaigns in California , you know that several things are true. First, voters’ information levels about the ins and outs of state government are very low. Second, as in Washington , there is a chasm between the concerns of political insiders and the concerns of voters. Third, the manner in which voters make a choice of candidates is not unlike the way supervisors choose among the applicants to fill a job. They look at the candidates’ resumes, run them through an interview, check their references and make what they hope is the right choice.
So, it’s time to get on the call and lay out your plan for how the Democrats will manage the budget and economic issues for the foreseeable future in 2010.
The headline is that, fundamentally, the Democrats, including Jerry Brown, will not engage at a public level in a protracted debate on the fine points of the state budget and state fiscal policy. 
First, Most voters do not know anything to speak of about the state budget. They don’t want to know. The reason they elect a governor and a legislature is to delegate responsibility for the budget and policy making, and they expect their elected officials to do the job for which they are paid. In other words, their mandate is: Figure it out and pass a budget.
Second, Jerry Brown is in the enviable position of being able to employ a low risk Rose Garden strategy. As Attorney General, he has more than enough opportunities to visibly protect the people of California in tangible ways without ever even mentioning the budget.
 Third, Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner have given the Democrats plenty of cover.
Campaigns have two choices of how specific to be about the issues. Some choose to provide lots of detail and in doing so provide their opponents and the press with endless targets. The alternative is to avoid that trap by speaking in generalities, but then the campaign has to endure never ending complaints that the candidate is being evasive or is ill informed. Steve Poizner has chosen the first approach and Meg Whitman has opted for the second. The Democrats need to get out of their way.
Jerry will continue his tireless fight for California consumers and small businesses from the Attorney General’s office. If pressed he, or other Democrats on his behalf, will remind the voters that Jerry is highly skilled at dealing with budgets, having gotten them passed repeatedly as Governor and as a Mayor. He can promise to get them passed on time starting in 2011.
The central issue, and it is certainly intriguing, is whether the Democrats in the legislature will find it politically advantageous to impose order or foster chaos during the budget process this summer.
The conventional thought would be that the party must achieve peace at any cost, and cut a deal no matter how odorous, to avoid further infuriating an electorate that presently awards them something like a 17 percent job approval rating. After all, what incumbent office holder, what incumbent party, wants to defend yet another public budget calamity this coming November?
But, thanks to the wonders of creative district design, incumbent California legislators and the incumbent party in any particular district are almost never at risk. Plus, what happens in the 2010 down ticket statewide races is presumably a function of how the top of the ticket fares, coupled with by race specific considerations.
So, it is conceivable that the Democratic cause would be better be served by chaos. The Governor is termed out and presumably unafraid of budget gridlock. The Republicans are politically irrelevant in California except at budget time, so they delight in exercising the power they have to create a budget stalemate. They will have no problem drawing out the budget battle.
If a protracted budget fight this summer will not put Democratic control of the legislature at risk, and if it will provide the perfect backdrop for Jerry Brown to highlight the value of his extensive, hands on experience as a governor and mayor, then we may be in for another incredibly discouraging summer.
But, whether the Democrats opt for budget order or budget chaos this summer, the bottom line on your presentation to the state Party’s leadership is: Let our presumptive gubernatorial candidate tend to his work as Attorney General; figure out whether the Party is better served by a quickly cut really offensive compromise or a drawn out, bitter fight over the budget. Execute well.
Oh yes. And to the dismay of everyone who cries out for structural reform to avoid future budget gridlock, stay out of that fight. Some political elites in this state have become convinced that we need to fix the process. Lengthen term limits. Take redistricting out of the hands of the politicians. Reduce the two-thirds vote requirement to pass a budget. Turn the state upside down by calling a Constitutional Convention.
They are right. Those things need to be fixed. But this is what the voters have to say about all that: California ’s elected officials need to do their job.
And that is what the Democrats will be talking about this year. How they are doing their job.
 
(This article appeared yesterday in the Capitol Morning Report, a subscription-based publication, www.capitolmr.com)

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